Alan Nunn May

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Alan Nunn May, British nuclear physicist and spy (born May 2, 1911, Birmingham, Eng.—died Jan. 12, 2003, Cambridge, Eng.), was one of the first Cold War spies for the Soviet Union. In 1942 Nunn May began working with the British branch of the Manhattan Project to study the feasibility of German plans to develop an atomic bomb, and the following year the members of the project were transferred to Montreal, where he was recruited by GRU, the Soviet military intelligence agency. Secrets he supplied to his handler included samples of enriched uranium and details of the bomb that was dropped on Hiroshima, Japan. In 1945, about the time Nunn May returned to Britain, a GRU agent based in Ottawa defected with documents that implicated Nunn May, and in 1946 he was arrested, convicted, and sentenced to 10 years’ hard labour, of which he served 6 years.